Re: Off Topic: English Grammar, Spelling, colloquialisms, etc.

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jimcbrown said...

Regardless, your version of the sentence is grammatically correct and clearly have the same meaning. It places an adverb ("only") describing the manner of the verb ("to execute") immediately after the verb and its noun ("the test"), and follows with an adverbial phrase describing the time. It also avoids the use of a split infinitive, unlike the original.

(Ever since Star Trek, I have embarked on a campaign to boldly make use of split infinitives whenever possible.)

In this sense, aside from the position of the adverbs, the two sentences are grammatically and logically identical. This means that both sentences should share the same level of ambiguity.

To clarify, what I meant was that someone could read your version of the sentence

eukat said...

In this case, i believe the sentence should be:

"The assert is intended to execute the test only during the development phase of the application."

and still parse it as "execute ... only" (instead of "to execute" and "only during") and still understand the meaning as "to perform the action of execution by itself without performing any other action".

eukat said...

The word "only" seems to be getting placed as far away as possible from the word or phrase it's modifing.

Ironicly, your version moves the adverb further away from the verb that it's modifying.

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